Create rules for loitering

Last modified: Tuesday May 02, 2023.

Create rules to alert your Avigilon Alta operators to potential loitering in the areas you are protecting.

Prerequisites

To use Camera templates or Date & Time settings, make sure you have configured them before creating the rule.

Task — Create loitering rule

  1. From the toolbar, open new tool button > rules tool button Rules.
  2. Click AddAdd rule.
  3. Type a name for the rule.
  4. Click the Loitering Loitering button.
  5. Set the Level of importance.
    High importance rules prioritize the cameras displayed in the Video view when a rule is triggered.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Select the type of object you want to find.
    You can select Any object, Person, Vehicle, or Face.
  8. Set your required loitering time, by specifying the time and choosing either Seconds, Minutes, or Hours from the dropdown.
    The default loitering time is 60 seconds, but you can select times of between 3 seconds and 999 hours.
    Setting loitering times of less than 10 seconds could negatively impact the accuracy of detection.
  9. Depending on your chosen object selection, select further characteristics for your rule.
    For Person:
    1. If relevant, choose the Gender.
    2. Select Only this colour, or Ignore this color for upper and lower body clothing.

    For Vehicle:
    1. Select All types or Only this type.
    2. For Only this type, choose one or more from 2 wheeled, Small/Medium vehicle, Large vehicle, or Unknown type.
    3. As needed, select Only this color, or Ignore this color for the vehicle.
    4. For deployments with License Plate Recognition, you can enable license plate matching in vehicle searches:
      1. Select Any plate, Exact match, Matches groups, Starts with, Ends with, or Includes characters from the license plate.
      2. If required, exclude all license plates in a chosen License plate group.

    10. For deployments that have LPR configured, optionally enable license plate matching in the rule.

    For license plate matching, select Any plate, Exact match, Matches groups, Starts with, Ends with, or Includes characters from the license plate.

    You can also choose to exclude all license plates in a chosen License plate group from triggering the rule.

  10. When you have defined what you are looking for, click Next.
  11. Select the cameras to be used in this rule:
      1. Use Search to help find the required cameras in the list.
      2. Click Site and device groups icon to filter cameras by site name, device group name, and device name, or click Labels icon to filter by label.
      3. If you have predefined them, use Camera templates to simplify adding the same groups of cameras to multiple rules.
  12. Optionally, define an Area of interest.
    1. Click the Area of interest icon Area of interest button.
      If you have selected multiple cameras, click the thumbnail that corresponds to the relevant view.
    2. In the main camera view, click and drag to draw the rectangular Area of interest box for that view.
      You can define multiple Areas of interest on each camera view.
    3. To create non-rectangular Areas of interest, select the area of interest, and drag the corner markers to the required positions.
  13. Click Next.
  14. Specify your required Date & Time and Rule activation settings.
    If you have predefined them, use Templates to simplify adding the same date and time parameters to multiple rules.
  15. Click Next.

  16. Select automated actions taken by the system when the rule triggers:

    • Pop-up: Show a notification in Alta Video that includes a thumbnail of the rule-triggering video. If required, select Also send a push notification on the mobile app.
    • Email: Send an email message to a system user or user group. You can define an email template and include data from the trigger.
    • External link: Creates a link to the triggering recording that can be shared with non-system users or embedded in an Email or Webhook notification.
    • Webhook: Dispatch a configured webhook including trigger data as the payload.
    • PTZ Cameras: Move pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras to pre-configured positions. This option is only available if PTZ cameras are added to the deployment.

    Alarms are only shown to operators that have access to the cameras that trigger the rule.

  17. To configure Advanced settings:
    1. Click Advanced settings Advanced settings.
    2. Check Trigger alarm per object to have each detected object as a separate alarm.
    3. To record more video at the end of the alarm, specify the Additional recording time.
    4. To merge similar alarms, specify the Merge similar alarms within time.
    5. Select how the triggered rule should behave. To trigger an alarm that shows in the Alarms tool, select Security Alarm (default). To trigger as an event that shows in the Events tool, select Security Event.
    6. Click Done.
  18. Choose if you require your operators to acknowledge the rule when it is triggered.
  19. Click Done.